Musicians | Wazala

Posts Tagged ‘musicians’

Musicians This One Is For You!

February 1st, 2012

We’re happy to announce the release of SoundCloud integration within Wazala! This integration allows you to set up a music shop with a few clicks, and grab music you wish to offer for sale, from SoundCloud into your Wazala store. We feel many musicians already using SoundCloud will benefit from the easy upload and set up of their music for sale. Not having to go through the creations of separate products, waiting for loading time and doing it over and over again.

The process is quite simple. In the Product tab, you will find the option of importing your tracks from SoundCloud, Once you click on that, an authorization page appears and you need to login into SoundCloud.

Once you allow Wazala access, your tracks will be listed. Here you can choose which tracks to import, state the price and if you wish to activate them for sale. Wazala can also import the genres as categories.

The import will start once you confirm. Depending on the size of your files, this should not take long. Once the import is complete click on Done, and you will be able to see your tracks listed as products for sale.

Customers will as usual, be able to preview the song, and once purchased the delivery is automated and secure through a masked Wazala URL.

It’s that simple, it’s quick and the best thing you can make money selling your music! Rock on!

Selling Your Music Online

September 5th, 2011

If your reading this, you’re probably a musician, a band manager, or something in between, and you want to make money selling music online. This article will give you a few ideas on how to make that happen.
The first thing you have to know about selling your music online is that its VERY COMPETITIVE and you need to be vocally smarter not loader!
Ready to put some BASS into your sales? Read on..

Be Everywhere
Don’t be shy. If you want to actually sell your songs online, your going to have to get your butt out of your cozy cocoon of solitude and become an annoyingly social butterfly. Sign up for every music service, forum and blog in existence. Create awesome profiles with pictures of your band in badass poses. If the regular band profile is a shy, acne ridden nerd sulking in the back of class, your profile should be the popular jock with a heart of gold and perfect SAT scores. Not every profile you make is going to be a home run. Some of them will get no attention whatsoever. The key is to be in front of every pitch, swinging like a freaking madman.

Make It Easy to Find
There’s no point being crazy cool if people have no clue where to go to witness your awesomeness. In order to make your presence known, you should tag your music with specific keywords that are relevant to the music your putting out. Just to give an example, my brother is in a band. I would best describe what him and his band “play” as a highly delicate mix of jazz fusion, electro-acoustic pop, and horrifyingly awful garbage. So if he wanted to make sure that people found his music (I don’t know why he would), he would tag his music with the words “indie, jazz fusion, electro acoustic pop, horrifyingly, awful, garbage. That way, if someone was in the mood to take a dive into the musical equivalent of a dumpster, the incomprehensible heap of noise that his band calls music would be right there to aptly accommodate them. (sorry brother!)

Sell Anywhere
So your a pretty big deal, and easier to find than an senior citizen in miami. Now its time to start printing the money. Wazala and the Benjamins go way back, and we’re always down to arrange an introduction. We make it scary easy to start selling your music online, so that making bank doesn’t make you crazy. Another great feature that makes Wazala so incredibly amazing is that it allows you embed your store everywhere. Your Facebook, your blogs, your tumblr, your website, your mom’s website, it doesn’t matter. Long story short, anywhere you show your “I live to rock” mug, people will be able to buy your “I live to rock” mugs.

Stay Social
Talk with your fans. Engage them. Let them know whats going on with your band. This goes hand in hand in hand with being everywhere. A social media presence online is imperative in spreading the word about your band, as well as retaining fans and keeping them informed. Basically, people expect to hear from you. With Wazala’s social promoter, this is a breeze. The social promoter recommends and publishes messages to your twitter and facebook account, making it much more simple and efficient

Offer Something Different
Don’t be boring. Offer more than just music. Selling your merch is a great way to make extra money and raise awareness about your band. You can sell posters, CD covers, t-shirts, unreleased songs, tickets to shows…..the list goes on and on. You could also sell signed merch for your hardcore supporters. Wazala allows makes selling all these things easy. You can also sell the physical version of your album, in addition to the digital version.

Cut The Middle Man
Cut out the middle man! Make sure that everything you sell is revenue to you! Wazala does not take a transaction fee. Just a minimum subscription, & there is also a free store where you can sell up to five products to start with until you can afford more.

Show Your Best
Make great music. Music that gets a reaction. When it comes down to it, if your music isn’t good, no amount of marketing is going to be able to sell it. Remember you may only get one chance to make an impression on a listener, so you better make it count.

Dune Music – An interview with the people behind the talent

August 11th, 2011

Lately we seem to see more musicians and labels using ecommerce solutions like Wazala to better their online sales of both music and merch. The importance of engaging with your fans directly and allowing them to buy from you on your own website or blog has been proven successful in achieving better revenues. We caught up this week with Adam Sieff from Dune Music, to chat about their experience with online sales.

Tell us about Dune Music and what it is you do?
We’re a platform for promoting and recording some of Britain’s most talented jazz artists, all of whom have won a clutch of prestigious awards plus several nominations for MOBO, Urban and other music prizes. I’m they Communications Director and deal with all aspects of marketing and promotion, especially in helping our musicians keep in touch with their supporters and the jazz scene.

What types of musicians or bands do you work with?
Strictly jazz…..that swings! We’re proud that all the artists came up through our Tomorrow’s Warriors jazz development scheme run by our founder, the original Jazz Warriors double bassist Gary Crosby OBE.

What prompted you to start an online store?
We wanted to be able to sell more than just music, such as rare posters and artwork, and to be able to control pricing easily. And we particularly felt the need to attend to our customers in a friendlier way.

What social media tools do you use to promote your business and how?
Twitter and facebook are effective, as are monthly emails and constantly updated Posterous blogs. But just because new tools are effective it doesn’t mean one should forget old media – newspapers, radio and TV are still hugely important. But nothing is as helpful as great reviews (in any media) and word of mouth reports that spread the word where you can’t.

Do you have any advice or tips to musicians on selling their music or merch online?
If what you’re doing is really good, then as the movie says, people will come. But it’s not a race, it can take time for your message to spread, so don’t panic and hang in there.

Any gigs coming up that you would like to announce?
We have a prestigious Friday Tonic event at London’s Southbank Centre on Friday the 14th of October at 5:30pm in the Clore Ballroom. Our Yamaha Music Experience prize-winning Tomorrow’s Warriors Biggish Band and the16 piece Tomorrow’s Warriors Youth Jazz Orchestra will be performing along with some special guests. And it’s a free event!

To know more about Dune Music, visit their site at www.dune-music.com

My Product Rocks

August 11th, 2011

Show us what you would sell with Wazala for a chance to win a FREE Wazala large account

Last month’s promo was a big hit. Our winner Shawn Hesketh owner of the Wazala store wp101.wazala.com and the design studio Left Lane, won the Wazala large account, and gifted it to his sister Tiffany who is now building another Wazala store. Happy to see this entrepreneurial family grow with Wazala, we are doing it again!

This time, it’s about what you want to sell. Show us what you would sell with Wazala for a chance to win a Wazala large account free for an entire year! Use it yourself or Gift it to a friend!

Upload a picture, video, link of a product you feel will sell well, to our Facebook wall. Give it an attractive name and explain why you feel it rocks, and would sell well. then share this posts to your friends and family to like, comment and vote.

What kind of product, you ask? Well we want to see what creative product you would sell online using Wazala. From music or a digital download, handmade handcrafts, photos, works of art, it really can be anything you feel will sell well. Be creative and sure it clearly showcases what you would sell in an attractive way. Remember the public is voting, so your product should be appealing to buyers!

Can’t think of anything to sell? Why not share this with someone who might? This contest is open to anyone and everyone with a product they wish to sell online!

Entry process:
Simply visit our Facebook page and post the product to our Wall. It can be a picture, video or link to somewhere, where it is available. Make sure you state what it is, if need be.
Once you do that, share this with your friends on Facebook, to like it, comment on it positively, and voice out that you should win. (use the Share button, below the post you created)

Terms:
You can upload as many pictures as you wish to increase your chances of winning. The Wazala team will choose one lucky winner, taking into consideration any comments and “likes” your picture gets from others in the community, so make sure to spread the word about your picture(s). This promotion will run for a few weeks and the winner will be announced on Facebook, Twitter and our website. Anyone can join. Whether you have a Wazala store, or still thinking of starting an online business you can enter to win. The prize is granted as a new Wazala subscription, and is transferable “once” to a person of your choice. Yes you can enter to win and give it away as a gift!
Happy Winning Everyone!

Augustine – An interview with the band

June 23rd, 2011

Jordan Meredith and Louis Johnson make up the electro-pop, New York-based band “Augustine,” named for Jordan’s hometown in St. Augustine, Florida where the two first met. They’ve been making music together since 2008 and we’re in love with not only their unique sound but their amazing site and Wazala online store!

We caught up with Louis this week to get the 411 on Augustine:

How would you describe your sound for someone who has never experienced your music before?
We describe our sound as a combination of Electro-pop and acoustic folk. We have our simple and melodic acoustic songs like “Silver Moon” and we also have our fast driving electronic tracks like “Heartbeats.” We just write whatever feels right at the moment. If you proscribe to one genre it limits what you can do and where you can take a song.

What prompted you to start your own online store?
Having an online store has always been on our radar but It wasn’t until our first college tour that we really understood the significance of it. After playing a show we’ll usually sell to about half of the people who are interested. The other half either don’t have cash, aren’t sure of what to get or just miss us. It’s so important to be able to offer an alternative to buying at the show.

How has music sampling affected online sales?
It’s hard to say… we haven’t really been online in a world without Sampling. I can only hope its been positive for us.

Do you have any tips, tricks or strategies for other musicians who are trying to sell online? Be it music or merch?
Always offer something that iTunes cant. Whether that be signed merch or a video of you singing happy birthday. Fans want something special.

Check out Augustine’s site for upcoming tour dates, music sampling and amazing merch: www.augustine-music.com

It’s Your Online Store – So You Store!

February 16th, 2011

Information imposes certain criteria on how it can be stored.
- John M. Smith

In an effort to make Wazala even more user friendly for the sale of digital products, we released the ability to host your files on you own servers. Many businesses out there are selling large digital files, that require a good amount of space to store. Wazala comes with 100MB dedicated to the digital download files, and you can buy more space as you need it. And now you can also host files on your own servers free of charge.

Digital artists, photographers, musicians, and authors of ebooks are drawn to Wazala for digital sales. The effortless set up and integration makes it a perfect tool to sell digital goods online, and now it simply got better and cheaper. Wazala will pull your files from your own server when an order is made and delivers it to you customer automatically. And best of all the ability to limit the number of downloads and link expiration is also included. No need to pay more for digital space, and no need to worry about secure delivery. It’s our way of saying “You earned it”!

The Digital Merchant

June 25th, 2010

“The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.”
– Douglas Engelbart

Developed to facilitate the sale of those with unique offerings, it is only common sense for Wazala to support the world of digital trade. Commodities have evolved into the intangible; selling digital assets such as photographs, ebooks and software is a vast and lucrative business for many.

Because it allows for various options within a product, Wazala makes it easy to sell multiple forms of a single file. A photographer, for example, can sell a low, medium or high resolution of a picture, not to mention the capacity to scale it into different sizes, file extensions and any other possibilities. And he can offer each option at a separate price.

And while the commerce of digital products is hard to control, with many people out there taking advantage of download links, Wazala has the ability to limit the number of downloads for each purchase as well as set the amount of time the download is available after payment. After all, even though they are not physical products, there is still a value to these digital files.

The ability to sell both physical and digital products within the same store is a nice bonus feature we have built into Wazala. Being able to offer a musician’s track for download as well as the original vintage LP makes Wazala a full offering online store solution. Checkout this sample blog that is set up with fonts/typefaces for sale, our music store where you can sample music and “mock” purchase an album or our photography store where you can buy a photo. You can even go through the checkout process and experience the purchase the way your customer would — just make sure you use your real email address on checkout so we can deliver your purchase to you.

Go artists! Go writers! Go web 2.0! Go Wazala!

Who did we build Wazala for?

May 25th, 2010

“We target people who understand that relationships are the lifeline of a small company.”
– David Rose

From way back when Wazala was an idea on a whiteboard, we were sure of one thing: our target user. We wanted to construct a shopping cart solution that is comprehensive yet clean and simple enough for unique personal brands to use.

The world of personal branding has evolved from the mom and pop store around the corner into the online world. Bloggers, artists and tastemakers that have managed to attract a valuable amount of traffic are looking to take advantage of their online presence. They are now admired, trusted and followed by many and are aware of the rewards they can harvest creating an online store within their own site.

They are also aware of what makes them unique, and not willing to risk loosing their identity and distinctiveness in the process, and Wazala values this! The seamless integration of Wazala with a site is clutter free with zero brand deflation. The minimal design integrates without cramping its style. We target photographers showcasing their work, musicians looking to book a gig, writers with something to say and artist who wish to express themselves. The many flavors of the web will not be overshadowed by Wazala!

Most started on a social network of some sort, and they managed to capture a following and create a name people relate to. Some have started a blog on sites like Blogger or WordPress, and even more are moving to their own website. This is why Wazala integrates with all of these sites and allows you create an online store easily no matter where you are on the web.

The lack of support, integration and features within the available e-commerce platforms that cater to these unique product providers is also why Wazala was created. Personal brands with unique offerings will benefit most from Wazala, but the use of Wazala by other audiences is only expected since it’s a simple to use shopping cart application that still manages to cover all the features needed to transform any site into a fully functional online store.

Welcome to Wazala!

Posts Tagged ‘musicians’

Augustine – An interview with the band

It’s Your Online Store – So You Store!

The Digital Merchant

Who did we build Wazala for?

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